Hopskoch, A Photo Challenge App That Changes Every Day

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In mobile, the big debate is apps versus mobile websites and so far it looks like apps are winning. The mobile web is still too hard to navigate for many people. Apps are self-contained and are generally better experiences. But slowly these two worlds are coming together. What if an app changed from one day to the next every time you visited it just like a website.

A good example of something moving in this direction is a simple photo game that launched on the iPhone (iTunes) today called Hopskoch. The same game is on Android. You load the app and are presented with a photo mission: take a picture of someone who looks like Conan O’Brien, or take a picture of your favorite superhero. You snap the photo, upload it and get points. Every day is a different mission, and as you gain points you unlock new features in the game. Over time you will also be able to unlock different games, including trivia and location challenges. Players will also be able to create their own challenges.

The games can be played across platforms so people with iPhones will be able to play against people with Android phones. The New York City based startup behind the app, Sifr, has created its own mobile app development platform that makes it easy to do that. “Using HTML5 as a language to develop our apps, we’ve managed to create native clients on different mobile platforms with relative ease and in short stead.” says CEO Sunil Madhu.

Sifr develops its apps using HTML5/CSS3/JS frameworks and then uses PhoneGap to produce native apps. It makes development across platforms a lot faster, and makes it easier to pour new content into each app.